| Summary: | In this paper we investigate three different types of infinitive constructions involving parain European Portuguese, viz. purpose clauses, complement clauses in which parabehaves as a true complementizer and complement clauses in which parabehaves as a preposition pertaining to the main sentence. We begin witha brief characterization of the Portuguese simple infinitive, arguing that, in appropriate conditions, it exhibits defective temporal propertiesthat are, nonetheless, non-specified whenever another component in the sentence ascribes temporal information to the infinitive clause.Then we compare the three constructions under analysis: although there are clear divergences in their semantic behaviour, we observe that in all cases the situation represented bythe infinitive clauseis systematically located inan interval that follows its Temporal Perspective Pointprovided by the main clause. In order to account for this regularity, we propose that,in these contexts, (i) the infinitive is non-specified regarding its temporal features and (ii) the lexical properties of paraare responsible for the posteriority readingstated above
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